Category: PhotoShop

As the spooky and ‘hallowed’ holiday approaches, I just wanted to remind you that if you want me to see (and sometimes share) your awesome Halloween photography, please add the hashtag #thisishalloweenphotography so it doesn’t slip down into the depths of the Google stream.

If it is tagged anything else, I won’t see it and that will make me a sad panda.

Also, if you want to tag me specifically, please feel free. I am not sure if any of the other Halloween hashes are manned this year, but I can tell you for sure, this one is!

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.” ― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

For the love of all things make-up like, and to satiate my need to make fun and sometimes bizarre self portraits, I give you this take on a few different elements.

First, it follows the gothic meme of literally ‘showing your heart’ followed by the symbolism of a dark and evil queen holding a heart in her bloodied hand (Inspired a bit by Regina from Once Upon A Time and her heart removal process).

Sure, I could have made the beautiful (as if glamoured) with a fashion make-up, but what fun would that be? I had my cool contacts and plenty of Snazaroo face paints lying around, so clearly something strange had to be done!

The most hilarious part about this shoot is the fact that those contacts are not corrective. That’s right – I was blind as a bat and tossing my glasses on and off in between a few burst shots to check the settings and lighting. Rather comical, I might add.

I actually have a few with my glasses on that I am going to process later on, but for now, here is one of the many versions I have created from this single image!

“We are aliveAnd the stars make love to the universeYou’re my wildfire every single night”

I created this multiple exposure with 3 images – a portrait, fire from burning alcohol, and the night sky (completely embellished because I get too much light pollution in my back yard). What inspired this creation was the song Empire by Shakira, which I recently heard and felt moved by. There is a beauty to the composition as well as the lyrics and emotion conveyed in its story-telling.

In school this week, we were focused on story-telling, so this just seemed to click conceptually for me. I honestly had plans for highly stylized make-up, but once I got the lyrical itch, I had to work this one through to the end.

“Be what you would seem to be – or, if you’d like it put more simply – never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.” ― Lewis Carroll

For this week’s +Selfy Sunday, that had no specific theme, I chose to take the opportunity to meditate after working on a class project at the beach, while searching my self for calm and peace, I decided to use that good energy to shoot my image.

I love being able to find my center and the quite empty, early morning beach with hard waves breaking was the perfect place to start the day.

If you are interested in checking out more images or submitting your own, check out:

This week, for my class photography project, we were focusing on food photography and typographic design. We were charged with shooting food and then either writing the recipe or ad text to complete the image. For me, I decided to use a recipe for my favorite energy juice that I drank before I started my Sunday homework marathon.

Since practicing yoga, gyming it up more, and working towards a more balanced trinity of mind, body and spirit, I have found raw or clean eating to be key.